INTERNATIONAL STRATEGIES FOR NORWEGIAN ART

During the last years, Norwegian art has received great attention abroad, in particular with success exhibitions such as OCA’s exhibition of Camille Norment at the Venice Biennale last year, Northern Norway Art Museum’s Balke exhibition at the National Gallery, London 2014-15, and earlier this year the Savings Bank Foundation with the Nikolai Astrup exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, which presently is on show in Emden, Germany. In 2015, the National Museum arranged an exhibition of Dahl and Friedrich in collaboration with Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Edvard Munch’s art has proven itself highly popular with the international audience time after time. In addition, other instittuions and other aspects of the arts – crafts, design, music, literature, film – had experienced attention abroad.

Where do we go from here? How can we build on these experiences to ensure that the international interest for Norwegian art will continue to grow and establish it self, rather than be one-time blockbusters? Can the different institutions and organizations with an interest in promoting the arts abroad collaborate and organize themselves in a way that will provide an even great effect in the future? Should a common strategy be drawn?

This seminar raises these questions and others, and explores different fields of the arts, both historical and contemporary. The seminar principally aims at the professional art world, and at the public and private institutions that work for promoting Norwegian arts abroad or wish to explore this field. Most of the talks and discussions will be held in English.

PROGRAM

8:30 a.m.:

Doors open. Registration. Coffee

9.00 a.m.:

Welcome and Introduction

Director Anders Bjørnsen, Dextra Arte, Savings Bank Foundation DNB:

Welcome on behalf of organizers

Introduction to the Savings Bank Foundation’s international strategy (NO)

9.15 a.m.:

Opening Talks

Moderator: Anders Bjørnsen

Dr.philos. Knut Ljøgodt:

International Strategies for Norwegian Art

Director Nicolai Strøm-Olsen, KUNSTforum:

Norwegian Artists out of Norway?

10:00 a.m.:

Coffee

10.10—11.30 a.m.:

Seen from Abroad: International Speakers

Moderator: Knut Ljøgodt

Dr. Alison Smith, Lead Curator, Tate Britain, London:

Promoting British Art: Tate Touring Programmes

Curator MaryAnne Stevens, former Director Royal Academy of Arts, London:

Anders Bjørnsen is Director for Dextra Artes and Dextra Musica, two subsidiaries of the Savings Bank Foundation DNB. After more than 20 years in DNB Bank he became the first director of Dextra Artes and Dextra Musica in 2007. Since then Dextra Musica has built up one of the fines string instrument collections in the world, all instruments are on permanent loan to talented and outstanding musicians. In the same period, Dextra Artes has built up an important art collection on long term loan to different Norwegian art museums. Bjørnsen has been in charge of the introduction of the Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup to an international audience with exhibitions at Dulwich Picture Gallery in London and at Kunsthalle Emden in Germany.

Anders Bjørnsen has an MA in Business and Administration from Norwegian Business School BI and a BA in Art History form the University of Oslo.

Katya García-Antón is an English-Spanish curator, and Director of The Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) since February 2014. García-Antón has been affiliated with several major international art institutions, including The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva; the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid; IKON Gallery Birmingham; the Museu d’Arte Moderno de São Paulo, Brazil; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, London. García-Antón has curated over 70 exhibitions across the fields of art, architecture, dance and design. She curated the Spanish Pavilion at the Sao Paolo Biennial in 2004 and in Venice Biennale in 2011; she co-curated the flagship exhibition of the very first edition of the Qalandiya International Biennial in Palestine in 2012; and the Norwegian Pavillion at 56th Venice Biennale 2015.

Dr.philos. Knut Ljøgodt is a Norwegian art historian, curator and institution leader. He studied art history at the University of Oslo, Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and Istituto di Norvegia in Roma. He received his doctorate from the University of Tromsø – Norway’s Arctic University, on a dissertation of Scandinavian history painting.

Knut Ljøgodt was the Director of Northern Norway Art Museum, Tromsø, 2008–16, and formerly a curator in the National Gallery, Oslo. He is also the Founding Director of Kunsthall Svalbard in the Arctic (2015), a space dedicated to international and Norwegian contemporary art. As a director and curator, Ljøgodt has focused on promoting Norwegian art and artists abroad, and has involved himself in several international projects, e.g. the Balke exhibition in the National Gallery, London 2014–15. His latest published book is Treasures: Selected Works from the Collection (Teknisk Industri & Northern Norway Art Museum 2016).

Dr. philos. Kasper Monrad is Chief Curator and Senior Research Fellow at the National Gallery of Denmark (SMK) in Copenhagen and is a specialist in Danish and international 19th painting and has organised a number of exhibitions of the art of this period in Denmark and abroad.

He has curated and co-curated several exhibitions of Danish and European painting of the early 19th century (the so-called Golden Age of Danish painting), including The Golden Age of Danish Painting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art & Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 1993–94; Baltic Light/Im Lichte Caspar David Friedrichs, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa 1999, Hamburger Kunsthalle & Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen 2000; Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, National Gallery of Art, Washington 2003; Turner and Romantic Nature, SMK 2004; Hammershøi and Europe, SMK & Hypo-Kulturstiftung, Munich 2012 and Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, SMK 2015, Hamburger Kunsthalle & Fondation Custodia, Paris 2016.

As Lead Curator in Tate Britain for British Art to 1900, Dr. Alison Smith works with the team of Curators and Assistant Curators responsible for the development of and research into Tate’s holdings of artworks from the late eighteenth century to the early twentieth century. She has delivered a number of exhibition and display projects at Tate Britain all of which have toured to venues outside the UK. These include Exposed: The Victorian Nude (2001), Turner, Whistler, Monet (2005), Millais (2007), Pre-Raphaelites: Victorian Avant-Garde (2012) and most recently Artist and Empire: Facing Britain’s Imperial Past (2015). She is currently working on an exhibition on the art of Edward Burne-Jones for 2018. As Co-Chair of the monitoring group for acquisitions of pre-1900 British art she has overseen the acquisition of a number of works for the British collection.

Erstwhile Director of Academic Affairs, Royal Academy of Art, London, MaryAnne Stevens is an independent art historian and curator. She specialises in 18th- and 19th-century art. Recent publications and exhibitions include Manet: portraying life, Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702–1789), and Nikolai Astrup: Painting Norway; Alfred Sisley: un impressionniste avant tout opens in 2017. Considered one of Britain’s leading curators, Stevens has a large experience with international projects.

Nicolai Strøm-Olsen is a Norwegian art historian, author and editor. He is Director and co-founder of the art-magazine KUNSTforum and has published a biography about the 19th century painter Hans Gude (PAX 2015). Strøm-Olsen has also co-written several books on business- and regional development. His latest book is Startup Europe – The entrepreneurs transforming Europe. As an art critic and commentator, he has proven himself a profiled voice in contemporary arts debate in Norway.

Trude Gomnæs Ugelstad is Executive Director of DogA – The Norwegian Centre for Design and Architecture, Oslo, and holds a degree in business economics and art history. She has formerly been director of several arts institutions, such as Akershus Art Centre, Oslo Kunstforening, The Norwegian Association for Arts and Crafts (NK), and Norwegian Crafts. The latter is an organisation that promotes Norwegian crafts abroad, in which Ugelstad was instrumental in establishing.

Margit Walsø is Director of NORLA – Norwegian Literature Abroad. Walsø is an experienced publisher and also a novelist herself.